skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
David Deutsch on Artificial Intelligence
Have you seen Citizen Media Notary? https://github.com/Miserlou/CitizenMediaNotary
Again with that little war of frameworks? Man there's a lot of money and pride behind all this, dear god.
"19 year olds are fanatics" !=> "fanatics are 19 year olds"
How exactly the pigeonhole principle help here? It only proves that you cannot compress all inputs.

For the challenge to be unbeatable you need to prove something much stronger - namely that for each file size most of the strings are random in the Kolmogorov sense. Has this been proven?

Edit: The above is too strict - obviously it would be sufficient to prove that for any size you can effectively compute a Kolmogorov-uncompressible string of this size. Anyway my point is that such proof would not be trivial.
Zoig...crashed
Interesting. I've stayed in hostels, and they are indeed cheap, and no, I haven't researched at all, it was just a thought. I haven't seen AirBnB either :)
I was talking more about Google Talk as opposed to Google+.

Many of your business connections are on your Google Talk contacts list (since you've emailed them).
I'm impressed that you're able to do a sociological study of "the others" as you drive through their neighborhoods, probably with your windows up and doors locked.

Non-snarkily, I think people are the same everywhere, mostly good and hard working with occasional cheating when they think they can get away with it. From my personal anecdata, I've seen both shady deplorable acts and admirable selfless acts from millionaires, middle class, working poor, and even from homeless people on the street.

I do think that the fact that poor people have to rely on help from their social network more often makes them more humble in general.
Site looks very good, needs some responsive action though.
That's not untrue, but that way of looking at things ignores the fact that constant, wild fluctuations in the value of currency have negative consequences for everyone that depends on the currency.
I read through the compression FAQ and found it quite interesting. I had never heard the counting argument before, but it's very intuitive.

Part of the FAQ is a collection of crazies claiming that they have created novel compression techniques. One entry is about Jules Gilbert, but it ends abruptly. I googled him and found that the crazy continues....

>I am afraid that I am not a fan of Google. They are gay-friendly and also they suppressed lot's of stuff about Obama before he was nominated, and again, before he was elected.

http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2010/08/13/969/
I got to ask -- how is the new keyboard? I have T420 from a year ago and it still had classic keyboard. Is the new one worse?
As a single male, living in a van doesn't seem like it'd go very well with a nice lady-friend that I might wish to get to know better. Especially when she starts speaking with her mother about my living conditions.

That's just me, though. Perhaps I'm wrong here.

edit: I should probably clarify what I said. Living in a van, in my mind as an outside observer suggests either some sort of inability to commit, or perhaps falling on hard times, or someone who is dillusional about their circumstances; and, as an outside observer, speaks poorly of the person who is in this situation. What I was refering to with speaking to her mother -- though it truly could be any person that is a friend to your ladyfriend -- is this: This person is looking out for your ladyfriend, and when they hear such things as "he lives out of his car", and "oh, he doesn't have a home", or any other number of issues.
You can hedge your bets with hash combiners: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~pietrzak/publications/FLP08.pdf

C_{4P}(SHA-2-512, SHA-3-512) should remain solid for a long long time. Your point of failure is, now, the signature scheme. To last for decades, do not use RSA or DSA. Use elliptic curve DSA or similar (EdDSA comes to mind).
I don't think I'd want the gold standard to come back, but I definitely support the idea of much higher transparency in what the Fed is doing and who are they giving money to. Some are saying this might end the Fed's independence, but will it really? I think higher transparency would just lead to them becoming more honest with what they are doing with the money. I don't think other countries have overly secret central banks with nobody knowing where the money are going and how much they are printing, do they? I'm generally of the opinion that higher transparency is always a desirable quality of a democratic Government and its institutions.

I also find it surprising (to say the least) that after 20 or so years of advocating for Fed transparency, Harry Reid is the one who's going to put a stop to the Audit the Fed bill in the Senate, which already passed the House with a big majority.
No, it would mean for a 2mb random file, there's a 50% chance that at least one of its halves is compressible.
No, because run-length encoding encodes the - well - run lengths in the file header. You can read those and know how big the resulting file will be without having to actually decompress the file.
The choice between fiat and gold (or gold/silver) is a false one. On a free market people would trade a wide variety of things, an important class of which are stocks and bonds, which indeed did function as money in the early United States, and would be even more practical today given that we have computers to facilitate conversion. A diverse, free market money system would put an end to global financial crises, which can only happen when everyone is using the same currency (or same small set of tightly coupled currencies) and therefore are all subject to the same general conditions: a centralized currency centralizes the crises as well.

But what's even more important is that a free market money system is the only moral system -- people have a natural right to trade in whatever denominations they please.
> Mike could send this one.

Only assuming he'd be able to generate one. Is there a known algorithm for generating a provably Kolmogorov-uncompressible strings?
Is that a trailer for The Matrix?
>When I read the challenge, and saw that arbitrary Unix programs were allowed, my first idea for a compressor was to scan the OS software for snippets of data that match the source data.

No this would not work. It is very simple to see this. There are more files with size n, than with there are with lower sizes. A decompressor should therefor be a surjective function from a smaller set to a larger which is impossible. This applies no matter how you construct you (de)compressor. You can have it access word lists, files on harddrive, etc. There will be at least one file it wont be able to compress and then decompress.
Users...eh. Signups are not revenue.

[cue 'signups can too be revenue!' HN submission]
If the article persuaded libertarians that their claim 'inflation is government stealing your money' is as fanatical as 'taxation is government stealing your money', then it has done its job.

It simply argues that both statements should be treated with contempt, especially since the former has recently been in vogue.
I agree with your post, though I am curious to know if there is any use for "this function is likely to terminate" inside static analysis.

How this guarantee is possible, despite the halting problem, is because he designs an abstract representation of the program being analyzed. It loses a lot of information, but by using it, one can actually prove things about the program.

I would rather say: the halting problem shows that there exists at least one program for which it is impossible to prove termination - not that every termination problem is undecidable, as the trivial example "return 5;" shows.
Obviously because the more the $ drops in value the more the Gold in Fort Knox grows...
Serious question: what kind of servo can you get for < $5? I recently built a robot, and spent $16/motor.

edit: never mind, the original site has a parts list. $2.69 each, he links here, but the site is down right now: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idP...
A poll of American economists a while back found 0% in favor of returning to the gold standard: http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-re...
I think it is entirely possible that we will have cars as a method of public transportation instead of private. Perhaps a merging of taxis with what we today think of as public transportation.
Not only does Colourlovers have tools for what you're complaining about (which is rarely something a computer can do to begin with outside of using equations to do so), but the other commenter was legitimately trying to point you towards a better solution. Ironically, instead of thanking him, you berate him and then called him the reason this place sucks. Yikes.
Red Meat Market Launches Local Meat E-Commerce Platform
come of up with a blog post or something that you think are some of the most trickiest hacks people have been trying on the app.

People will be able to use that as a checklist to make sure that they are handling those hacks in the app that they have been developing
yeah.. no go for me either. i waited a good 5 min too
tl;dr

Photographer stitches together thousands of photos as a two-dimensional panorama. Very impressive and very beautiful, but the "hyperphoto" nomenclature might be a bit bombastic.

Direct links to each photo:

http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/cour-de-marbre/

http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/versaillesversailles/

http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/escalier-de-la-reine/

http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/versailles-city-hall-stair...

http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/cle_de_voutecle_de_voute/

http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/bibliotheques-ideale-1bibl...

http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/telephones/
Drill Powered Upholstery Scrub Brush
It also means that the majority of our currency would be controlled by people outside our country, prospecting on its future value. If that doesn't terrify you, it should.
Awesome post. Emailed.
View Controller Lifecycle in iOS 6
I thought so too but it finally loaded for me after several minutes and 125mb of memory. Could use a bit of lazy loading, I think.
Panning is a pain.
Twitter Scheduling Apps: Head-to-head Click Test
Robot Suitcase Moves Itself Around for You
Ask HN: Android/iOS Chrome syncing for password management?
I read [1] that the risk of malware in a platform such as Windows diminishes the security of Chrome password syncing, though I guess to some extent this threat must be present in Mac OS and Linux as well.

In view of this, does the additional security layer found in the Android/iOS sandbox model provide a satisfactory level of security?

Most importantly, any HNers who are willing to say this is their preferred method for dealing with password management?

Any variants, comments and corrections will be welcome. Thanks!

[1] http://www.howtogeek.com/70146/how-secure-are-your-saved-chrome-browser-passwords/
Don't worry honey, that "creepy" guy living in front of our house is actually just an entrepreneur!
Mapping Mars, Open Source Style
"non touch", as in, you touch it with finger and thereby provide input?
Steve Blank: How to Build a Great Startup, Step by Step
Technical Debt – when do you have to pay it off?
Hacking for evil?
So, imagine that one installs WebDrive on one's computer, which installs Google FS behind the scenes. Then, with Chrome Developer Tools one can virtualize an operating system in JavaScript, create user profiles and start running them through profiling tasks. For example: clicking through a honeypot filled with random click-to-pay ads.

The key part is when one creates malicious Facebook apps to obtain user details that can be used to flesh out the user personas in Chrome. That makes the pay-for-click companies much less suspicious about the activity.

I swear I've seen this in action, though I won't touch it with a ten foot pole. Thoughts?
Allow User Editable Content With CSS
I assume they are subject to taxation, too.
If you asked for a big enough file of random bytes, eventually, chances are that the file would just happen to contain the substring "Xcat $1\nprintf X\ncat $0\nexit\n". You then do the following:

1. Copy the part of the file preceding that substring to a file named "foo".

2. Take the rest of the file, including all of the substring EXCEPT for the initial X character, and put it in an executable file called "decompressor".

When you run "./decompressor foo > out", you will then recreate the original file. The length of decompressor + foo will be one byte shorter than the original file.
It is worth reminding that adoption of the gold standard is mere possibility of the central point libertarians are trying to make.

The real issue is force. Libertarians do not believe that it is okay for the government to exercise sole monopoly over issuance of currency with force. They want free market system that would allow competing currencies to develop rather jail those who issue their own currency.
One of the coolest todo list ideas I guess
Big fan. Ended up getting a W500 from a Lenovo outlet because the newer machines have abandoned my beloved WUXGA (1920x1200) screen.

Widescreen? More like shortscreen.

Business machines should not be optimized for consuming entertainment.
I also don't understand why gold-standard advocates seem to believe that gold is intrinsically the foundation of wealth. Why should the dollar be pegged to gold and not silver, or platinum, or rhodium? How about crude oil, or helium, or drinking water, or land in Manhattan? How about anything else that has value? All wealth is not gold, and I don't see a compelling reason why we should pretend that it is.

All the things we value vary over time relative to each other. Given that, why should we arbitrarily pick one and say that it is the foundation of our currency? Why should the price of bread fluctuate wildly to accommodate gold speculators?
Praptak:
>Only assuming he'd be able to generate one. Is there a known algorithm for generating a provably Kolmogorov-uncompressible strings?

In the theoretical case he has almost a 255/256 of doing it he generates a string in a truly random fashion.
In the practical case his odds are much better. Many potential programs will a) refuse to run and b) give the same output.
> But the challenge isn't to compress random strings, the challenge is to compress a specific random string.

I agree and I think that this challenge is vulnerable albeit very difficult but not impossible, at least not via the pigeonhole principle.

To be clear, the pigeonhole principle says for a given compression aglo and an input file of size n the output file must get bigger than n for some inputs of size n, i.e. it cannot compress all possible permutations of size n.

However, the way the challenge is setup it is saying; given a specific random file of size n, find an algo that can compress the file so that the output plus decompressor is less than the input file. The pigeonhole principle does not say this is impossible. Granted, finding the algo that does this may mean solving P=NP or may take 10^32 lifetimes of the universe in calc time to find it but in principle it is not impossible.

I admit, my understanding may be wrong and would really appreciate it if someone can explain to me my error here.
Does Gender Bias Explain Why Fewer Women Than Men Are in STEM Careers?
for what it's worth, dealer servicing is now free for 3 or so years on BMW's... makes that pain ... much more bearable.
It depends on when you were born. If your first contact with the II was in the mid-90's, I would understand someone finding it underwhelming. It's also an understandable feeling if you were never curious enough to peek under the easily removable hood.

If, however, you compared it to its contemporaries, the S-100 machines with serial terminals, the TRS-80 and the PET, "revolutionary" would be the only possible word.

And, if you had the curiosity to peek under the hood of a II after taking a look inside an IMSAI, you'd understand what an elegant electronic design looks like. Every time I think that the computer in front of me is a not significantly evolved descendant of the original IBM PC, I despair a little. This triumph of the mediocre is not what I studied for.
Increasingly, stores I go to do not require signatures for credit transactions under a certain dollar value. At the Home Depot (which recently started accepting Paypal - what?) I believe the limit is $50. So the steps are:
1) Get wallet
2) Find the card
3) Say "credit please" as I swipe the card
4) Get receipt.
Can anyone please comment on the humans involved in running some of this stuff? What are their roles, occupations? Infrastructure? Who owns that?
> Every morning I read a number of websites devoted to technology and programming to see what is new.

I looked over at his sidebar hoping to see a blogroll. Remember when people used to do that ... about 5 years ago? I wouldn't call it irony, but reading about coding at 56 while getting nostalgic for 5 year old internet practices is a strange juxtaposition.
I reap enormous value from Facebook and frankly feel that the tradeoff is well worth it.

Anytime I see an update in my feed that is either inane, useless, irritating, cloying, etc., I simply update the settings for that user's updates to "Only Show Important". After over a year of cultivating my feed, I am treated to a birds-eye view of the experiences of important people in my life every time I log into Facebook. This is nothing short of miraculous to me.
That really depends. On the internet nobody needs to know that you are 40 or 50. Finding a permanent job at a SV company may be harder, but freelancing / contracting is not.
Switching gears from tech to marketing- Bountify.co
Quite many people read e-mail, twitter and facebook while driving. Having it in front of you is much better than in the palm of your hand. Even if you should not do it at all.
Music Invader is a great title, isn't it?
I threw together something like this using scraps I had around.

Instead of using cardboard though, I used a piece of acrylic for the base. Then I got a couple of those blank expansion slot covers from the backs of PC cases, and bent them to make another stand-off platform on which I mounted a piece of ABS. On that I put a webcam and Pico-ITX SBC with a SDD affixed to the bottom of the ABS. An NiMH battery pack was put on the lower base between the two servos to keep the CG low.

The wheels were initially blank CDR's but they didn't get
very good traction so I eventually found some wheels for an RC airplane. I used a small caster wheel in back.

The moral of this story is always have scrap plastic around.
I have built so many small helpful things out of it like a stand for a 7" tablet on exercise bike, etc.
Nitpicking, but missing disclosure:

OP works for a company named Instrument that does work on several things for Google. Google is a competitor to Facebook.

My name is Thomas Reynolds. I'm a Technical Lead at Instrument, lucky denizen of Portland, active Crossfitter, a foodie, a cocktail enthusiast and all-around nerd.

http://weareinstrument.com/work/

In late 2011, Google came to Instrument and tasked us with designing an online product experience for the global launch of Google's first phone with Android 4.0, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Partnering with Google, we crafted a new identity for their “Developers” brand to educate and inspire those who embrace their open-source platforms.

To welcome the arrival of one of the biggest days in sports, we created “Game Day”, in partnership with Google, to speak directly with football fans around the world about the many helpful features of Google Search.
We'll get to him next week.
"Non-snarkily, I think people are the same everywhere, mostly good and hard working"

If that is the case then why do I keep my windows up when I drive through those neighborhoods. Are you saying I have nothing to fear driving my new expensive car through, say, many areas of Newark NJ or areas such as the "Badlands" in Phila PA? Or that I am safe to walk the streets in those areas? And if those areas are so great and wonderful places to raise families why are the actual good hard working people that live there trying to get out to provide better for their children?
I am curious to know if there is any use for "this function is likely to terminate" inside static analysis.

Well, something like "this condition is likely to be true" could help give an estimate for whether a loop will run many times, which leads to things like a better estimate for the cost of spilling to the stack values used in that loop instead of keeping them in registers.

the halting problem shows that there exists at least one program for which it is impossible to prove termination

I'm not sure that "every halting checker has some input where it gives the wrong answer" permits the conclusion "there is some input where they all give the wrong answer." Is "the machine must generate a proof of its answer" what lets you make that extra leap?
I wonder how the upcoming generations of Bitcoin mining hardware will change this calculation. They are all SHA1 FPGAs/ASICs that implement SHA1.
It would also be interesting to see how GPUs perform.
While I agree, the term 'gigapixel image' seems to be off-putting for some. The notion of an image you could zoom into forever like some of the Escher works is interesting.

I say a 600 dpi color image (at scale) of an Italian balcony at some event at the Bellagio, it was pretty impressive.
This has been done for years to produce gigapixel images. In fact, there's even commercial hardware to make them easier to make (see: http://gigapan.com). As this made headline news when it was done for President Obama's inauguration back in January of 2009 (among other examples), can someone clue me in on why Slate thought this was novel or new?
Ask HN: How early should a YC application be submitted?
The YC application says early submissions have a "significant advantage" because readers have more time to read them and engage with founders.

How early is "early"? Does submitting 5 days early, say, make much difference? Or are we talking more like weeks?
"and you're only getting exercise because you have to walk to your printer sometimes."

Actually I've been running about 340 days per year for the last 14 years as well.
Has anyone noticed the new "I'm feeling lucky" button?
Mouse hover it
Too little, too late: Blockbuster gives up on trying to beat Netflix
The trick is to maximize surface area. Taking this to it's logical conclusion, the fastest way to boil that much water probably involves aerosolizing it into a rather large and hot flame. Perhaps that LO2/charcoal flame. ;)

If that is cheating, then the solution is probably somewhere in the middle I suppose.
> By definition, the Kolmogorov complexity K of a string x is defined as the length of the shortest program (self-extracting archive) computing x. K(x) itself cannot be computed, only approximated from above, namely by finding better and better compressions, but even if we reach K(x) will never know whether we have done so. For a text string like enwik8, Shannon's estimate suggests that enwik8 should be compressible down to 12MB.

The current record is 15,949,688 bytes.
I think I agree with you, please see my reply to unconed above;
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4618495

I'd love to know if I am wrong.